Sometimes, you wonder if all the payments from the big-man has deluded someones mind and vision. Like he has to call hardliners in the Forum for Democratic Change (FDC) extremists, because supporters of FDC are vicious people in his eyes. That is because they don’t pay him to spread their vision. The more Andrew Mwenda speak, the more he sounds like the brethren of Yoweri Kaguta Museveni. Today is no different. He speaks of the beautiful rain-man style voodoo of the National Resistance Movement (NRM). Take a look!
“Lessons for Besigye from Kyadondo East
So yesterday the state deployed its full military might on display like it has never done before. The aim? To win in Kyadondo East. In spite of the deployment (and perhaps because of it) the NRM candidate lost. Bobi Wine won. First lesson: no amount of rigging can stop people power. Second lesson: Kizza Besigye and his hooligans have no people power. Third lesson: FDC extremists claiming anyone stole their votes are deluded. Advice to FDC extremists: Go to the people and get their support first. Stop lying to yourselves that someone steals your votes” (Andrew Mwenda, 30.06.2017).
I don’t know if Mwenda was considering that if it was the same with Presidential Elections compared to the a smaller By-Election. He should think of it differently. There was play of Police Officers and Military Police in the Kyadondo East polls. But they we’re not as significant as during the General Election of 2016. When the whole militarized politics and the police interference in politics was into another level. Yesterday, the only thing IGP Kale Kayihura did was smiling and not calling all his brigades, neither all of the RDC or DPC to act upon the promise to cherish the Presidents vision.
That is what happens, all of the state are in the works during a Presidential Election, where the State are already using all their methods and all organizations to take control. They use even fighter planes to fly over Kampala to spread the fear and stop people from demonstrating. They used all sorts of policing to barricade and stop party works of the FDC. They imprisoned major parts of the FDC leadership, activists all over the country and there wasn’t any sort of momentum to gain. The public couldn’t be engaged when they are fighting court-battles and not have the time to significantly move them.
It wasn’t like in February 2016 the team around Dr. Kizza Besigye and Gen. Mugisha Muntu was chilling it on Lake Victoria on the beach with a Nile Brew. Certainly, the state was using all tactics to stop the movement and possible demonstrations, they we’re even more eager to arrest, detain and silence the opposition FDC and others. They were more vigilant. Not like in Kyadondo East where 10 people we’re arrest at Kasangati, if it was in and around February, there were dozens of people arrested, the we’re people shot and killed during demonstrations. The police was using tear-gas and ensuring massive amounts of fear. Not like yesterday, they we’re really just barricading and driving around compared to the Presidential Election.
That the people’s power in the General Election would means that the engagement of the Bobi Wine style in whole of Uganda. The difference is that the NRM regime wouldn’t allow that. If the locals in every village and every town, than Mwenda’s people would have reacted and called in uncivilized, not called it people’s power. They would claim that people had lost their marbles and should trust in the NRM. Because people like Mwenda praises and lives of the NRM. Mwenda doesn’t want the public to take control of the National Talley Centre where the Electoral Commission together with their officers we’re rigging the election. That one was close guarded and would need an army to stop it.
That the Opposition party officials and the ones with the copies of the Declaration Forms, they we’re hold at gun-point, their houses raided and the offices cleared as well. This was not how they did it at the By-Election. They acted more peaceful for a simple reason. The NRM didn’t need this one… If they needed it they would acted like they did during the General Election of 2016. The NRM already owns the Parliament, owns the State and controls the Security Organization. This is just formalities at this point, the Parliament are a majority of NRM MPs. These are all men and woman loyal to the crony system of the President.
There is a vast difference and if Mwenda’s vision would be real, as the ones around Kasangati Resort, he would like the people to rise-up, walk together towards Okello House and throw the President in Lake Victoria, leave his Presidential Lodges and Farms burning across the land. See citizens on every corner throw stones at the Police Officers. Act up on the Military and Soldiers, stop paying VAT and really not act as a citizens. Stop the whole system, revolt and act with true resistance and defiance against the NRM regime. Be worse than Walk to Work, be more vigilant than the Action 4 Change and get all sorts of demonstrations against the system.
If this happen, he would call of them extremist, but that is what the Kyadondo really did. They closed off and stopped the rigging inside the Kasangati Resort. If this would have stopped during the election, the Police had be taken hostage by the public, the Talley Center’s had been taken by the public and the Electoral Officials would been followed by the public every moment. Not had the capacity to rig the numbers and give the polling stations different numbers. They would have made issues in every town, every village and in every parish. The Police would have to act upon it and the military too. There wouldn’t be breathing place and a place of ordinary peace.
I want to wish you good luck Mr. Mwenda, if the FDC are radicals or extremists, than his wish of Kyadondo East election, means that he wishes true defiance, true resistance and expression towards the Electoral Commission in unprecedented levels. Such that the NRM never seen and we can only hope happens. But Mwenda seems to forget the legacy of how the Police and military attacks the FDC in the hour of dire need and how the leadership are taken behind bars in and around the polls. But hey, Mwenda has forgotten how it is to be a voice against the NRM, when your could suddenly be silenced and be taken behind bars. For any sort of speech and acts against the regime. This he shouldn’t forget, but the paychecks from them, let is dementia hit early. Peace.
MinBane 